Skip to footer

On St. Patrick's Day, a dancing green aurora?

The massive solar storm currently bombarding the Earth could produce Northern Lights visible from the contiguous United States.

|
NOAA Space Weather Prediction Group
This NOAA image shows the forecast for aurora activity on March 17, 2015 during a severe solar storm. NOAA space weather experts say there is a chance for auroras as far south as the mid-United States, along a line extending through Tennessee.

A massive solar storm is bombarding Earth now, and it could super-charge the northern lights to offer a better chance of seeing dancing green auroras just in time for St. Patrick's Day, weather permitting.

The surprisingly strong solar storm — ranked as a G4 geomagnetic storm by NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center — could trigger brilliant auroras for people in dark areas as far south as Tennessee tonight (March 17), if the space storm continues. The storm began at about 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) today. 

The G4 storm is not a danger to satellites or astronauts in space, but it could affect GPS and radio signals on Earth, space weather scientists with NOAA said in a press teleconference today. The solar storm has not been linked to any power outages on the planet, they added. (The most extreme geomagnetic storms are categorized as G5 storms in NOAA's system.) [See photos of the biggest solar flares of 2015]

"This is one of two severe geomagnetic storms that we have experienced during this current solar cycle," Thomas Berger, director of the Space Weather Prediction Center, said during the news conference.

The G4 storm is the result of two large eruptions that left the sun on Sunday, March 15. Two coronal mass ejections (huge explosions of super-hot solar plasma) directed toward Earth joined up while speeding through space, creating the large solar storm. The active region on the sun that spawned the eruptions is currently rotating out of view of the Earth.

NOAA officials expect that the solar storm should continue for at least the next several hours, but these types of storms are difficult to predict.

If the storm does continue, it's possible that people in northern Europe will have a great view of auroras tonight. United States stargazers might also be able to see the light show when darkness falls, assuming the storm continues.

Some skywatchers have already reported amazing views of the northern lights.

"We have heard of some very vivid sightings of aurora before the sun rose today," Brent Gordon, the Space Weather Prediction Center's space weather services branch chief said during the teleconference. "Aurora sightings were mainly confined to the northern tier of the United States — Minnesota, Wisconsin, both North and South Dakota as well as Washington State … and of course Alaska as well."

Geomagnetic storms are created when material shot from the sun interacts with Earth's magnetic field. The solar tempest can create incredible northern and southern lights displays, but it's also possible that the most severe of these storms could knock out power grids.

A powerful geomagnetic storm on Halloween in 2003 forced astronauts to seek shelter on the International Space Station because of potentially dangerous radiation levels. The Halloween storm also stressed power grids on the planet. Earth hasn't experienced a G4 storm since late 2013, Gordon said.

Visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center website to find out if your area of the world might get the chance to see auroras today.

Editor's note:: If you take an amazing photo of the northern lights from the March 17 geomagnetic storm and you'd to share it for a possible story or image gallery, send images and comments in to managing editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article onSpace.com.

Copyright 2015 SPACE.com, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to On St. Patrick's Day, a dancing green aurora?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0317/On-St.-Patrick-s-Day-a-dancing-green-aurora
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe